Larry Summers Smacks Down Fox’s Bartiromo: I Didn’t Realize You Were Part Of The Trump PR Operation

Even if you’re not an economist nor a fan of former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, I think you can appreciate his smackdown of Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo as she tried to promote Donald Trump’s financial proposals.

Much of the 9:31 interview was rather dry. But after Summers confronted Bartiromo by saying, “Maria, I didn’t realize you were part of the Trump PR operation,” that started to change.

Summers went on to eviscerate Trump’s economic plan:

SUMMERS: Yes, we do need to change our strategy but we need to change our strategy towards one that emphasizes having prosperity bubble up rather than trickle down. There’s no reason why the top priority in the United States should be cutting taxes for companies at a time after profits have tripled. We need to broaden the tax base as well as cut the rate.

No, there is not a case for savage deregulation from people who believe that global climate change is some kind of myth of the environment.

No, there is not a case for wholesale financial deregulation that will let banks go back to the things that got them in trouble before 2007 and the 2008 crisis.

No, there is not a case for systematically erecting tariffs and other barriers to trade with other countries at a time when anybody knows that our businesses don’t just import products, they produce as part of global supply chains and if we cut ourselves out of the global supply chains, we’ll cut ourselves out of being competitive.